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Update 7: June 12, 2013 -- During the last ten weeks, nearly all the states and the District of Columbia have implemented cuts to benefit amounts paid under the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program – damaging cuts mandated under the mindless and harmful federal budget sequester that was triggered March 1 by Congressional failure to enact rational budget policies.read more »

Just one hour before midnight on New Year’s Day, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a one-year renewal of federally-funded Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) as part of a year-end tax compromise which had passed the Senate some twenty hours earlier, and President Obama signed the measure yesterday. The reauthorization maintains the EUC program through December 31, 2013 as it was structured during the last four months of 2012. It neither adds nor reduces the maximum weeks of available EUC benefits for which states qualify depending on their three-month average unemployment rates.
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The importance of federal unemployment insurance in alleviating serious hardship for workers and their families is highlighted in a new report today from the National Employment Law Project (NELP). The report features the story of Jordan Douglas from Texas, a single mother of a 2-year-old son who is in danger of having her benefits cut off at the end of the year if Congress fails to renew federal unemployment insurance.read more »

More than two million unemployed workers receiving federal unemployment benefits will be abruptly cut off in the week between Christmas and New Year's, unless Congress acts before then to reauthorize the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program for 2013. Nearly one million more who run out of state benefits would be without access to federal benefits in the first quarter of 2013 if Congress fails to renew the EUC program.read more »

UPDATE: 9.6.2012 - September brings a third phase of reductions in availability of federal unemployment insurance (UI) benefits under the 2012 extension law. We outline the recent changes here, as well as the earlier June changes, and provide an updated Q&A on the 2012 federal UI extension program -- which, without Congressional reauthorization, will expire at the end of the year.read more »

Overcoming efforts to dismantle federal unemployment insurance and undermine the basic UI system, Congress today approved a compromise payroll tax rate extension that also averts a threatened March 1st expiration of federal jobless benefits. Under the plan, the federal unemployment insurance program for long-term unemployed job-seekers who exhaust regular state benefits is continued, while maximum durations of benefits are reduced in stages over the remainder of 2012.
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